Hotel Worker's Body Found in the Rubble Of the Trade Center

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After 17 days of painstaking digging through tons of broken cement and mangled steel, construction workers yesterday spotted a black boot, pulled away chunks of concrete and found the body of Wilfredo Mercado, the hotel worker trapped in the underground garage of the World Trade Center bombing. Authorities said they believe he is the last person missing in the massive explosion.

Mr. Mercado, whose body had eluded search teams of special dogs and heat-detecting cameras, in part because it was buried so deep in the wreckage, was the sixth person killed in the Feb. 26 bombing. The first five victims were found within hours of the explosion at the 110-story twin towers.

The discovery came as investigators continued to search for suspects and a motive in the bombing that left more than 1,000 people injured. They were seeking a 33-year-old Egyptian born taxi driver who they believe had once been a driver for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a fiery fundamentalist Islamic cleric now in the United States who was tried and acquitted in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat.

The recovery of Mr. Mercado's body, buried under 12 feet of wreckage and surrounded by the mustard jars, pens, pencils and commissary items that once filled his office and a nearby food closet, ends a frantic search by hundreds of workers and concludes the drawn-out vigil by Mr. Mercado's wife, who traveled daily from their home in Brooklyn to watch over the site.

"We're grateful that Wilfredo has been found, thankful for all those who assisted in the search," his wife, Olga, a Peruvian immigrant, who lived with her husband and two children in East New York, said late yesterday afternoon in a statement. "We ask the whole city to pray for him and ask for some privacy to mourn his loss."

In a separate statement, Stanley Brezenoff, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, offered his sympathy.

"I am greatly saddened by this terrible news," he said. "My heart goes out to Mrs. Mercado, her two young children, and all the others for whom Mr. Mercado's death means suffering and grief. We are all diminished by this loss." Too Unstable for Search

Searchers said yesterday that the rescue dogs, trained to detect missing bodies, had shown "some mild interest" last week in the area where Mr. Mercado's body was found. But that the area -- a spot near the northeast corner of the crater where Mr. Mercado's underground office had been -- was too unstable to search further until last weekend. On Sunday, after almost two weeks of nerve-racking forays under dangling concrete, steel and piping, workers were finally able to use jackhammers to drill through the large concrete slabs that covered the space where Mr. Mercado was thought to be.

"The dog was right," said Kevin Rodino, a Connecticut State trooper, whose dog, Vandi, had scratched three days ago around the area where Mr. Mercado's body was found. "But we didn't know until now that the dog was right. Unfortunately, the digging takes hours and hours and hours."

The search for clues to the bombing continues at the site. But until yesterday, officials were pressing for round-the-clock digging to find Mr. Mercado. Investigators believed that the 37-year-old purchasing agent for the New York Vista Hotel and Windows on the World was working alone in his office in the garage when the 1,000-pound bomb went off, trapping him under mounds of twisted wire and cement.

Yesterday, police officers and construction workers said that when found, just before 2 P.M., Mr. Mercado was still in his office chair and appeared to have been killed instantly, buried beneath 12 feet and 2,000 tons of rubble. He had fallen three floors, to level B-4, into the midst of the collapsed wreckage.

Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the chief medical examiner, said that his body had been preserved because of the cold weather -- a factor that made it difficult for the dogs to detect him.

A Port Authority police officer, Steve Vitale, a member of the emergency services unit, said he was on the B-1 level surveying the crater yesterday afternoon when five construction workers, pulling rubble from the site, called out that they found Mr. Mercado's body.

"The dog kept hitting the area since Thursday, so that area was a hot area," he said. Digging With Hands

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The cavern, which had been filled moments before with the clamor of construction, grew eerily quiet. Emergency workers moved in to exhume the body using their hands, small shovels and pinch bars, so as not to damage it.

Mr. Mercado, who had come come to the United States 17 years ago, learned English and earned a college degree, while working seven days a week at two jobs -- as a purchasing agent and a security guard -- to support his wife and two daughters, Yvette, 10, and Heidy, 3.

"Anyone who knew Willie knew he was a compassionate, kind, humanitarian guy," said Mrs. Mercado in a teary interview Friday night from a hotel room across from the site, where she had waited for news.

The discovery came as a Federal grand jury prepared for expected indictments of suspects in the bombing later this week. Authorities said that among at least three other possible suspects being sought is an Egyptian-born taxi driver of German citizenship who eluded agents last week and may have fled the country.

The man, listed in state license and taxi records as Mahmud Abouhalima of Brooklyn, was said to have been a driver in the past for Sheik Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian cleric whose radical preaching in mosques in Jersey City and Brooklyn have drawn some of the other bombing suspects. 'He's Been Lost Track Of'

One investigator said Mr. Abouhalima knew some of those under arrest, including Mr. Salameh, and was suspected of involvement in the plot. Federal agents believed they were close to arresting him on Friday but did not find him at a location where they thought he would be. "He's been lost track of," the investigator said. "God knows where he is now."

Officials continue to be intrigued by connections to El Sayyid A. Nosair, the man tried for the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane. And they are looking into the possibility that Mr. Abouhalima, the taxi driver, was outside the hotel where the rabbi was killed, waiting in a getaway car to help Mr. Nosair escape.

CNN reported last night that Mr. Nosair also has a personal injury suit pending against both the Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Center, and New York City. Port Authority officials confirmed that Mr. Nosair had filed a claim in 1987 after he reported burning his hand while doing electrical work at the Port Authority passenger ship terminal on the Hudson River.

It is not clear if the suit figures in the investigation, although Port Authority officials said they told investigators about Mr. Nosair's suit soon after the bombing. "Aside from his notoriety, we consider it a routine matter," said Allen Morrison, a Port Authority spokesman.

As for Mr. Abouhalima, Barbara Nelson, the lawyer for Sheik Abdel Rahman, said the taxi driver "isn't familiar to me" but said she would not necessarily know who drives the sheik. WIlliam Kunstler, the lawyer for Mr. Nosair, said he did not recognize Mr. Abouhalima's name.

Records of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission listed a Mahmud Abouhalima who received a hack license on July 2, 1986. Renewed annually since, it expired in July 1992. His addresses in Brooklyn listed in the records were 265 74th Street and 7219 Fifth Avenue.

Investigators said that the authorities, searching for at least one more suspect, recently checked another list of names against records of the taxi commission. One of the suspects was said to be a 27-year-old resident of Flatbush Avenue near the Manhattan Bridge. Authorities said they tried to arrest him this weekend but could not find him. They said he may have left the country.

A version of this article appears in print on March 16, 1993, on Page A00001 of the National edition with the headline: Hotel Worker's Body Found in the Rubble Of the Trade Center. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe